Bonds set for four employees charged in deaths at sweltering Hollywood nursing home

From left - Jorge Carballo, Sergo Colin, Althia Meggie and Tamika Miller were in court to learn how much they would have to pay to be released from the Broward County Jail. (Broward Sheriff's Office)

Three of four employees now facing felony charges for the 12 patient deaths inside a sweltering Hollywood nursing home surrendered Monday at the Broward Main Jail. A fourth was transferred Wednesday from a jail cell in Miami-Dade County.

Carballo, Colin and Meggie spent Monday night in jail and appeared before Broward County Judge Jackie Powell on Tuesday morning. Carballo and Colin each had bonds totaling $90,000 while Meggie’s total bond amount was $17,000. Miller appeared in court Thursday and had bonds totaling $48,000, court records showed.

Tamika Miller, 31, was a nurse at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills during the loss of air conditioning due to Hurricane Irma. (Miami-Dade Corrections / Courtesy)

Carballo, Colin, Meggie and their lawyers met about noon at a law office and together went to the jail where they quietly slipped in to begin the hours-long booking process.

That’s one count for each of the eight patients who died of heat exposure on Sept. 13, 2017, after three days without air conditioning, and the four who died in coming weeks and were ruled heat-related homicides.

Sergo Colin was a supervisor at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills during the loss of air conditioning due to Hurricane Irma. (Broward Sheriffs Office / Courtesy)

Colin had been left in charge of the building even though he had started working there just about a week earlier.

Meggie had worked a total of 10 days in the three months she had been there and hadn’t worked a shift in three weeks. Miller, 31, had become a licensed practical nurse that same year.

Eleven of the 12 who died of heat exposure were on the second floor. The first patient to die had a temperature of 108.3 when she was taken to the Memorial Regional Hospital across the street. The next had a temperature of 107 degrees.

Althia Meggie was a second-floor nurse at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills during the loss of air conditioning due to Hurricane Irma. (Broward Sheriffs Office / Courtesy)

Meggie’s charges include two counts of manslaughter and two counts of tampering with or fabricating evidence, Frankel said. He had not yet seen a listing of Miller’s charges but suspected they were the same.

After leaving the jail Monday afternoon, Frankel said he had not yet seen the arrest warrants or affidavits for the warrants but felt optimistic about getting Colin, Carballo and Meggie released on bond while they await trial.

Hollywood police announced a press conference to be held Tuesday morning to discuss the department’s two-year criminal investigation into the dozen heat-related deaths at The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills.

“No additional information regarding this ongoing investigation will be provided prior to 10 a.m. on Tuesday,” police spokeswoman Miranda Grossman said in an email

Advertisement

Hurricane Irma knocked out the air conditioning at the nursing home on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017. For three days staff tried to tamp down the escalating heat with fans, portable coolers and by hooking chillers up to air ducts.

But by early Wednesday morning, Sept. 13, 2017, patients were sweltering, feeling faint and dizzy. Some were breathing heavily, others were panting. Between 2:55 a.m. and 3:09 p.m. that day eight patients were pronounced dead. Six more would follow in subsequent weeks; two of those deaths were not deemed to be heat-related.

“I am deeply saddened by the fact that these health care workers — good people, family people, stable people — will be dragged through the mud," said Carballo’s defense attorney James A. Cobb Jr.

Cobb believes the Hollywood Police Department vowed to make someone pay for the deaths they saw. “I understand the emotion,” he said. “But emotion shouldn’t dictate whether or not criminal charges are brought.”

Meggie’s lawyer, Lawrence Hashish, felt likewise.

“She’s in shock. She’s hurt,” he said of his 36-year-old client, a temporary, part-time employee who picked up emergency shifts at short-staffed facilities.

“She jumped into emergency mode and was helping whoever needed help. She didn’t panic, she didn’t break down, she called 911 when needed, she was comforting residents," he said.

“It doesn’t appear that anyone was neglected,” Hashish said. “However, the Hollywood police want somebody to pay for it, so they chose the easiest targets.”

He wrote the book “Flood of Lies, the St. Rita’s Nursing Home Tragedy” after successfully defending nursing home owners in Louisiana who were charged with negligent homicide after Hurricane Katrina, when 35 elderly patients at St. Rita’s drowned in their wheelchairs and beds.

The Louisiana jury thought it was inappropriate for the government to prosecute health care workers and caregivers who showed up for work during a hurricane and then had to make tough decisions, Cobb said.

“We should not be charging health care workers," he said. "If we start doing that and the next storm headed for Florida, if I were a health care worker, I wouldn’t show up. That is the policy risk the police and prosecutors run.”